A report rendering might contain, but is not limited to, multiple pages, headers and footers with text and page numbering, in specific fonts and colors. There may be a main body section that contains several tables, with cells of numbers and words in them, some containing special formatting such as color and text attributes. A rendering might also have charts that contain graphical elements and labels. Further, the rendering contains specific structural layout information. In summary, renderings can be arbitrarily complex.
Mobile devices, including but not limited to cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs, are often constrained in memory. As a result, displaying and interacting with large, complex reports can be challenging without consuming large amounts of memory.
One way of moving a large report from a server to a mobile device involves simplifying the report, which results is a less accurate representation of the report. Another way involves downloading the report onto the mobile device, which would require a long period of time as well as a continuous connection between the mobile client and the server. Often, for large reports downloading is not robust enough.
It is desirable to have a way of representing an arbitrarily complex rendering of a report in a compact manner to reduce the memory required to represent the report on the mobile client. It is also desirable to be able to use synchronization protocols, instead of downloading, to move the report from the server to the mobile client.